Urban centres increasingly have difficulties meeting water needs within their hydrologic basins. To sustain urban water supply, cities and water source regions have increased telecouplings (socio-economic and environmental interactions over distances).

To analyse these complex interactions, we apply the new telecoupling framework to the water-stressed megacity of Beijing’s imported water supply. We found that Beijing’s remote water sources have lower risk than local supply, but connections impact the sending systems. The telecoupling framework provides a standard, systematic and flexible tool for evaluating the sustainability of urban water supply. It also identifies a number of research gaps for future quantification efforts.

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About the Center

The Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability at Michigan State University integrates ecology with socioeconomics, demography and other disciplines for ecological sustainability from local, national to global scales.

Coupled Human and Natural Systems(CHANS) are integrated systems in which humans and natural components interact. CHANS research has recently emerged as an exciting and integrative field of cross-disciplinary scientific inquiry to find sustainable solutions that both benefit the environment and enable people to thrive. Visit CHANS-Net, the international network of research on coupled human and natural systems, for information and ways to engage.